Tuesday, 1 December 2009

In Which Winter Arrives

I can't deny that, on this occasion, the whether had impeccable timing, bringing the first hard frost of the winter this morning, 1st December. It is on mornings such as this that I regret the fact my house has central heating only downstairs!

There was a lovely sunrise (and one good thing about this time of the year is that the sunrise comes at a relatively civilized hour of the morning!)

Then there was the less lovely scraping of frost off the car windscreen. Inside and out, as it turned out. Perhaps I should avoid breathing inside the car for the next few months?

Then off out for my drive to work. It was a pleasant change to not be going through pouring rain, and to be seeing blue skies and sunshine sparkling off the silver-grey grass, it was clear that the frost and ice were not confined to the the fields. There was black ice on the road, too. Particularly treacherous as the road had been gritted so mainly felt (and looked) safe.

As I came (thankfully slowly and carefully) around a corner it was to the sight of a car which had been driving in the opposite direction to me, spinning backwards into the hedge - I watched as it tipped up but, fortunately came back down the right way up, and the driver was only shaken, not hurt.

As we waited for her to extract her car from the hedge, and feel ready to drive on, a motor bike came (again, travelling in the opposite direction to me) - as he came level with the car in the hedge he also hit a patch of black ice. His rear wheel skidded and he and the bike went down. Fortunately he had already slowed down a good deal, presumably having seen the accident, so although he was clearly shaken and (I suspect) bruised, he was not seriously hurt and his bike wasn't badly damaged.

The rest of the journey was taken very carefully - and I passed another road-closure (police and all) which I suspect was also related to the weather, and a little later, the sight of another car in the hedge....

I arrived at work feeling very grateful that things weren't worse.

In more cheerful news, my parents are home now after spending the last 6 weeks in New Zealand, and I shall be spending the weekend with them (hopefully they will be more or less over their jet-lag by then)

I have also taken to heart Royal Mail's claim that the last posting date for Christmas, for stuff going outside Europe is this Friday (although I don't really believe it, and strongly suspect that I could post stuff for weeks and it'd still arrive in time) and have been writing cards for various non-european friends.

The frost was pretty, but I shall be quite happy if tomorrow is a little less wintery.